Giving Thanks: Topsoil, Rain, Bread of Life

The Rev. Brad Sullivan

Lord of the Streets, Houston

November 26, 2025

Thanksgiving

Deuteronomy 6:1-11

Psalm 100

John 6:25-35

When the people of Israel came into the promised land after they had been freed from slavery in Egypt, God commanded them to take the first fruits of the food they were growing, and bring them to the altar of God to be given as an offering of thanksgiving. This offering was a reminder that God had been with the people from the beginning and that God brought them out of slavery in Egypt so that they could be a light to the nations. The offering also reminded the people that God gave the growth to their crops, so they were to give thanks to God from whom all life flows. The people planted and tended their crops, and God gave the soil and brought the rain so the crops could grow.

Radio broadcaster Paul Harvey once noted that “despite all our many accomplishments, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.” If there were no plants on the earth, there would be no animals. If humans could not grow fruits, and vegetables, and grains, we would all die. So, we do indeed owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains. 

Giving thanks for the simple fact of food helps ground us because when we don’t give thanks, we tend to take things for granted. We don’t notice any of the blessings around us, and when we no longer notice blessings, we tend to fall into despair. If there’s nothing for which to be grateful, well then there’s nothing good in the world, and if there’s nothing good, well then everything is bad. 

What do we do with the bad stuff in our lives? We tend not to like it that much, and we end up contemptuous and resentful of all the bad things in our lives. So, when we stop giving thanks, we tend to become contemptuous and resentful of everything in our life, even the good things. 

It seems God really knew what he was doing when he told the people of Israel to give thanks for the first fruits of the harvest each year. Remain grateful so that you can remain joyful. Remain grateful so that you notice the blessings around you and don’t fall into despair.

There is also something particularly healing about being grateful for food, and I think it is this: food comes from the ground, from the earth, which is where we come from. We are connected to our food because we are connected to the earth. 

When the people of Israel were wandering in the desert, God gave them manna to eat. It rained down from the heavens and the people gathered it every morning. It was described as the bread of angels. That’s pretty fantastic that God gave the people angelic food, and they didn’t even have to work for it. Every morning it just appeared, and the people quickly came to hate it.

Ok, on the one hand, guys, just be grateful. On the other hand, I think they grew to hate the bread of angels because it wasn’t from this world. They weren’t as connected to the manna as they were to the fruits of the ground. 

There is something about real food that connects us to the earth and to each other. Meals eaten together connect our families and communities. Those meals, that food, connects us back to the earth, that six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains. Those meals then, that food, helps remind us of our connection to God from whom all life flows and from whom all love flows.

God loves us so much that he thought becoming human sounded like a pretty neat idea, so that God is connected physically to us, just as we are connected physically to the earth. Our sustenance, our food, is not only the physical food that comes from the earth, but also the physical connection to God which comes from Jesus.

“I am the bread of life,” Jesus said. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Never be hungry and never be thirsty, Jesus said, even when we mess up, even when we turn away from Jesus, because we always get to turn back. 

Jesus said that our work, the work which will bring us the bread of life, is to believe in Jesus. Well, that work that Jesus would have us do means believing in all of his life, and his teachings, and his death, and his resurrection. 

Last Sunday, we heard about Jesus’ death in his crucifixion, calling out “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Forgive them for killing the bread of life. That’s love, right there, God’s great love for us. Not only did God give us six inches of topsoil and rain so that we can eat the physical food of this earth, God gave us the bread of life, the physical connection between us and God. In Jesus, God gave us a physical connection with God’s own eternal life, and when humanity tried to kill that physical connection between us and God, Jesus said, “Father forgive them.”

We can’t do enough bad to sever God’s connection with us in Jesus, and we know this because of Jesus’ resurrection. The resurrection tells us that God doesn’t give up on us, even when we give up on God. As a friend of mine, the Reverend Pete Nunnally said, “Even though we tried to kill God, God came back to us.”

That is the bread of everlasting life which we eat by believing, and we let that belief be real enough to change our lives. 

“Do not work for the food that perishes,” Jesus said. Do not work, and strive, and fight just for things that’ll help you feel better for a moment or two. The next bit of cush will make you feel better for a short while, but it will also drain you of life. The next drunk will help you not care for a time, but it will also drive people away from you and make them push you away. 

The police are making the rounds more and more on the streets of midtown, moving people off the sidewalks, removing people’s belongings, and forcing people to leave the area. On the one hand, it kinda sucks to take someone who has no place to live and force them to go away to somewhere else. On the other hand, when folks are using drugs, getting drunk and high, threatening men and harassing women so they no longer feel safe coming to church here, who could blame the police for making people move on?

I don’t say this to condemn, because as a recovering alcoholic myself, I truly do understand the pull and the chains of addiction. I understand using something to feel better and feeling like that thing will fill the hunger. I also understand how addiction harms one’s behavior, and I understand how addiction leads to anger, resentment, fear, and hopelessness. 

I understand trying to fill a hunger with food that doesn’t satisfy, “food that perishes,” Jesus said, and I understand how dark life can be. I also believe that the true hunger we feel is not just to feel better. The true hunger we feel is for eternal life. The true hunger we feel is for connection with God and one another. The true hunger we feel is for love and belonging. 

So, today I offer again what God has given us to fill our hunger, the bread of life which is Jesus. God became human to connect us physically with God’s own eternal life, and not even death Jesus’ death on the cross could sever that connection. “Even though we tried to kill God, God came back to us.” 

No matter how often we turn away, God always invites us back. So for us, the antidote to our anger, resentment, fear, and hopelessness is not numbing out with food that perishes. The healing for our anger, resentment, fear, and hopelessness comes from the bread of life, and working for that bread, believing in Jesus. Our healing comes from believing in Jesus’ teaching and ways. Our healing comes from believing that Jesus is the eternal life of God joined physically, and our healing comes from letting that belief be real enough to change our lives. 

So, on this day of giving thanks, we remember God’s gifts, and we remember the gift of gratitude itself, because without gratitude, we stop noticing the blessings around us, and we fall into despair. We give thanks today for the food of the earth, for that six inches of top soil and the fact that it rains, connecting our lives physically to creation. We give thanks for the bread of life. We give thanks for that physical connection to God’s eternal life, Jesus, whom we tried to kill and who came back to let us know that nothing can separate us from God’s great love for us and God’s eternal life.

Wine Coolers? Really?

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
August 18, 2024
Proper 15, B
Ephesians 5:15-20

Psalm 34:9-14
John 6:51-58

“Give thanks to God at all times,” Paul said. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,” Jesus said. I wonder if those two things might be related. It’s a good bet, since I brought it up, that I believe they are. 

For weeks we’ve been talking about Jesus as the bread of life, and I’ve been talking about ways in which Jesus is that bread of life and ways that we receive that bread of life. So, today we get to add “giving thanks to God at all times” to the ways that we receive Jesus as the bread of life.

So, of course, that means we can’t get sad, or if we do, we have to give thanks about the fact that we’re really sad and miserable. I hope it’s obvious that I’m joking. Giving thanks to God at all times is not just a rule that needs to be followed. Jesus as the bread of life is not just some rule to be followed. 

Jesus as the bread of life is a way of life. If we’re looking at eating the bread that is Jesus’ body as a rule to be followed, then we’ve got plenty of systems and commands within the various parts of the church for how exactly we’re supposed to follow that rule. 

We share the sacrament of communion, we get baptized, we make an adult profession of faith, and on and on. If we follow these rules about Jesus, then we have life within us, so some teachings within some parts of the church would go. We get eternal life. We get to go to Heaven when we die. All of these rules for how we receive Jesus as the bread of life are fine, I suppose, but a lot of them tend to miss the point. The rules would say, receive Jesus as the bread of life in this particular way, and then you get to go to Heaven. The point of Jesus as the bread of life, however, is that the life of Jesus, the eternal life of God is what we get to live now in this world, following Jesus as a way of life, not just as a rule to be followed. 

Following Jesus, living the eternal life of God here and now, we live the truth that there is more beyond this life, so we needn’t fear death, nor be overcome by grief. Receiving Jesus’ bread of life as the way of letting go of our anger and desires for vengeance, we can let our anger turn to sadness, and our sadness to acceptance, trusting in God’s vengeance. Even though there are plenty of people whom we feel definitely deserve vengeance, and yet are obviously fat and happy in this life, we can trust in God’s justice, God’s vengeance, even as we trust in God’s mercy. That life of trust and acceptance, and the resulting peace that comes is the eternal life that Jesus gives as the bread of life.

If we look more at this way of life that Jesus is, we heard Paul say in Ephesians chapter four, “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery.” Well, if we look at this simply as a rule, then if ever you get drunk with wine, then you’ve done wrong, and you must repent. “I’m never going to do that again,” you say the next morning. Then of course, you do get drunk on wine again, at some point, and it becomes this cycle, eventually figuring, “Eh, I’ll be forgiven; I don’t need to take that rule too seriously,” or we take the rule way too seriously and not only do we not drink, but we say all drinking wine is wrong and evil. 

Even further, if we look at not getting drunk off wine as a rule, well then we get to say, “Paul only mentioned wine, so getting drunk with beer and liquor is ok.” Wine coolers? They’re

obviously not ok, but they don’t break the rule. Do we really have to make a rule for each type of alcohol? 

Then, we have other drugs that Paul didn’t mention. Do we have to make rules for each of them? Do we have to make individual rules about not getting high or stoned off weed, heroin, cocaine, crack? We’d have to keep making up rules forever, wouldn’t we, because even 20 years ago, Fentanyl wasn’t a thing, so, now we’ve got to make a new rule against that.

Hopefully, all of that is obviously ridiculous. The way of life Paul describes points to the problem not of one substance or one time of getting drunk. Paul telling us not to get drunk off wine addresses how we can use everything I just mentioned: drugs, alcohol, and so many other things. When we’re using these things to escape reality, to feel better regardless of the consequences, that’s when Paul is saying we’re having a problem. When we use alcohol, drugs, sex, money, whatever else to feel better and escape reality, and we lose control and do other harmful things, those are the problems Paul is talking about. Wanting to feel better, heedless of the cost and consequences.

Trying to escape reality, rather than living in reality, that’s the real problem. Becoming addicted to changing the way we feel, rather than working with those feelings and working with others in the world, that’s the real problem. 

Enjoying oneself with friends, while “getting drunk with wine,” as Paul said, but being safe, not driving, enjoy the evening, and yes, feeling a little more tired crummy in the morning than you otherwise would, I’m not sure that’s what Paul was talking about. Ok, you enjoyed time with friends; that’s a good thing.

When you start doing it every night? Doing it to numb your life? Doing it so you can make bad decisions and not really care? That’s where the “getting drunk off wine” becomes a problem. That’s where it becomes a way of life that brings death. 

So, “Do not get drunk with wine” is not just some rule to be followed, but a way of life in which we seek to deal with life and handle life with the help of others, not just numbing away our feelings to trying to feel good so we don’t ever have to feel. 

Part of life is pain and having to deal with that pain, and following Jesus as the bread of life helps us deal with that pain.  “Give thanks to God at all times,” Paul wrote. That’s part of how we deal with the pain of life, again, not as a rule, but as a way of life. 

Consider the way of gratitude. Following in this way, we work at finding things for which to be grateful, and then we give thanks. We practice living gratitude every day. That doesn’t mean we ignore the bad or push our sadness aside, saying “thank you,” to God just because we’re supposed to. Practicing gratitude means even in the midst of suffering, we look for something for which we can be legitimately grateful. Our sadness is still there, but there’s a little bit of hope too, a little bit of peace. 

Following the way of gratitude, we can choose, to some extent, what the world looks like. If we only focus on the negative, the problems, the complaints, then those things become our food.

If we practice gratitude, on the other hand, focusing on the good, giving thanks for blessings we see, then that becomes our food. Feeding off of gratitude, and the goodness in the world, and the blessings we see, that sounds like the bread of life which came down from Heaven. Feeding off that bread of life, we find Jesus is right there with us in our suffering, strengthening us, holding us, helping us join with others. We can practice gratitude, and let that be our food. Doing so, we can receive Jesus as the bread of life, and we can “be filled with the Spirit, as we sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among ourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in our hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

What Does Life Sound Like?

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
August 11, 2024
Proper 14, B
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
Psalm 34:1-8
John 6:35, 41-51

“Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” That sounds like life to me. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life,” and the way of Jesus which Paul described in that passage from Ephesians sounds like the bread of life that Jesus is. 

“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” Forgive one another for the sins committed against one another. See, God has already forgiven us of all our sins committed against God.  That was done by Jesus on the cross; any sins we commit against God, God has forgiven. No more sacrifices for sin. We’ve been made right with God. Done. Finito. We’ve received that bread and that life so that we can work toward loving one another. 

That is what Jesus gave his life for, so that we might be freed from the bondage of our sins, freed from the ways we’ve acted inhumanely, and with that freedom, we may try again to act more humanely the next time. Then, following in the way of God, Jesus taught us to forgive one another the sins we commit against each other. 

That sounds like life to me.  

We are all beautifully and wonderfully made beloved children of God. We are good. We are made good, and we are blessed. If we look then, at the idea of sin, we need to remember that the word for “sin” in scripture is an archery term, meaning “missing the mark.” 

You know what happens when you miss the mark? You get to try again. Jesus came to free us from sin so that when we miss the mark, we may be healed and try again. Jesus is the bread of life to get us back to the archery range, heal our woundedness, and strengthen us to hit the mark next time. When we don’t, we aren’t beaten by Jesus, we’re given correction, helped to hit the mark the next time. That’s the bread of life. 

Unfortunately, the ways we often treat one another when we sin, when we miss the mark, look more like this.

The archer shoots and shoots pretty well. Then, the archer misses once, and he’s punished. Now, he can’t shoot as well. He misses more and more often, and he’s punished more and more. Eventually, he’s imprisoned for how badly he shoots. In prison, he grows weaker and is injured further. Then he can’t even get his arrows to the target. He’s beaten even more. Does that sound like life to you?

In another case, the archer again shoots pretty well, but then when he misses, others really like it. It was a really great looking shot, and the plunk it made in the tree beyond the target sounded really cool. He keeps shooting at the tree, he keeps missing the target, he keeps getting rewarded for it, and others who are actually hitting the targets, they get ignored. Does that sound like life to you?

Some are punished for missing the mark. Others are rewarded, and we get so used to it all that we don’t even recognize the harm we cause each other because we’ve been beaten down and broken.

That doesn’t sound like life to me. It sounds like how we live a lot of the time, but it doesn’t sound like life. Unfortunately, pretty much of the time we see people routinely rewarded for ways they miss the mark, and we see people beaten down for ways they miss the mark. That’s not the bread of life.

For Jesus’ part, his way is to forgive us and correct us. That’s the bread of life, and yet even in the church, we often follow the way that is not the bread of life. We often follow the way of reward and punishment both for hitting the mark and missing the mark. What have we been doing for centuries in the church when people mess up? We’ve been threatening them with eternal torture.

Threatening people with eternal torture is beating people down for missing the mark. It’s traumatic, and as we beat people down with the trauma and fear of eternal torture, people become less and less capable of hitting the mark. So, they get more and more threats. That’s not the way of life. 

To be clear, Jesus does talk about punishment after this life for those who are cruel to others and for those who are indifferent to the suffering of others. 

What Jesus doesn’t do is give us a clear set of rules to know who deserves God’s punishment, who doesn’t, nor even what exactly that will look like and what the final purpose may be. We’re given glimpses. We’re assured that even when justice doesn’t happen here on earth, God will take care of that justice.

We don’t have a clear picture of what that will look like, and when we claim to know God’s judgement will be like, and when we claim to know who will and who will not be judged by God, we’re putting ourselves in God’s place, turning ourselves into our own idols. We aren’t given the tool of God’s judgement to beat one another down with when we see others missing the mark. We are given the bread of life. 

So, does the bread of life look like assuring those we feel are wrong that they will be punished by God while we will not? No, that does not look like life. When Christians make claims about who God will punish and who God will reward, what we’re doing is beating down and further breaking folks who we think are missing the mark. 

What we’re called to instead is to seek healing. We’re called to remember what sin really is.   

We aren’t forever corrupted and damned in God’s eyes. I know there are parts of scripture, particularly parts of Paul’s writings which, when misunderstood and read out of context, seem to say that we are broken and damned, but we are not.

We are God’s beloved children, and when God became human, God joined with us fully, so that we will know that we are blessed and wonderful.

In the book “To Life: A Celebration of Jewish Being and Thinking,” Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote, “For Judaism, sin is a deed, not a condition…a sin is not an offense against God, an act of disobedience. A sin is a missed opportunity to act humanely.”

We miss the mark by acting inhumanely, and we don’t heal acts of inhumanity by acting inhumanely ourselves. We heal acts of inhumanity by responding with the very best of our humanity, offering correction with love and helping each other hit the target next time. 

That is the bread of life which Jesus gave. “I am the bread of life,” Jesus said, and Paul described one way we eat the bread of life, by “putting away from us all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and being kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven us.”

Many Ways to Receive Jesus as the Bread of Life.

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
August 4, 2024
Proper 13, B
Ephesians 4:1-16
Psalm 78:23-29
John 6:24-35

Lord of the Streets, Houston

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me will never be hungry,” and ever since he said that, his disciples and later the church, have been trying to figure out exactly what he meant by that. Some have thought he was talking about the sacrament of the Eucharist, Communion, sharing the bread and the wine which becomes his body and blood in the sacrament. Some have said that it’s not about that at all. Apparently there have been legitimate long-standing arguments in the church over this. I once heard a twenty-minute sermon about how Jesus saying, “I am the bread of life,” is all about the sacraments and how we have to receive communion in order to receive Jesus as the bread of life. The sermon ultimately sounded like, “convert to (their) brand of Christianity or you can’t know Jesus.”

It wasn’t a very good sermon, and I didn’t agree with it, but at the same time, I don’t really need to argue against it. With the whole, “how is Jesus the bread of life,” question, do we really have to come up with just one way? Do we really have to argue over it, with who’s right and who’s wrong?

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians tells me, “No, we don’t.” “Speaking the truth in love,” Paul writes, “we must grow up in every way…into Christ, from whom the whole body…promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love.”

We are all part of Christ’s body. All of our various churches in our various ways are part of Christ’s body, even the weird ones. You know which ones I’m talking about (everyone’s got a different answer for that, of course). There aren’t multiple Jesuses, Jesi(?). There’s one Jesus. There’s one God. So, there’s one church.

Paul writes about each part working properly, all the different parts of the body. Thank God the church has so many parts, so many ways that we look really different from each other. Like I said, some churches, to me, they just seem weird, and they probably think we look weird in here doing what we’re doing. We need all of these different varieties of churches in the one worldwide Church, because we people are all so different.

A great church with a great worship, and a great way of learning, and a great way of living the life Jesus has called people to live, that kind of church ain’t gonna work for everybody. For a lot of folks, they need a different church that’s also great at those things, just not for everybody. Then you got the weird churches because some of us are weird.

What this means is that there are many different ways we come to Jesus as the bread of life.

So first, let’s look at why we come to Jesus as the bread of life. What are some of the ways we hunger? Well, we get hungry for all sorts of things. Some of us hunger for success. Some of us hunger to prove ourselves. We hunger for security, for enough. We hunger for release from fear and anxiety. We hunger for purpose and meaning in our lives. We hunger to be accepted, to be important. We hunger to be a part of something.

In all of these parts of our lives, with all of the things for which we hunger, Jesus makes the claim, “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.”

So, let’s look at some of the ways we come to Jesus and eat the bread of life.

When we love others, we come to Jesus, we meet Jesus in each other, and we share the bread of life. When we serve others as they are in any kind of need, we come to Jesus, and we eat the bread of life. When we study scripture and we marinate ourselves in the word of God spoken through scripture, we come to Jesus who is the Word of God, and we eat the bread of life.

When we pray, sometimes together with others, sometimes by ourselves, in the quiet of meditation, giving thanks, asking for help, joining ourselves to God in prayer, we come to Jesus and we eat the bread of life. When we join with others in worship, the whole community together, in whatever way we worship, even the weird kinds of worship, we come to Jesus and eat the bread of life.

When we receive communion, when we share the sacrament of Jesus’ body and blood, we come to Jesus and eat the bread of life.

When we take Jesus’ teachings seriously, making the changes in our lives we know we need to take, when we know we’re going down a path that is harming us and harming others, and turn around and ask for God’s help, and begin following again in the way of Jesus who is the way, and the truth, and the life, then we eat the bread of life.

When we seek to do good for others, rather than just trying to feel better ourselves, when we step out of our own stuff for a little bit and we help someone else, we find that we are fed by Jesus, the bread of life, and our stuff isn’t quite as bad as it had been. We are healed when we help heal others.

When we realize that we are Christ’s body, all of us together, each of us individually, we are all Christ’s body, and we give our lives with Christ to be blessings for others, we find that we are feeding others with the Body of Christ, and we are being fed with the Body of Christ.

We find our sustenance together in Jesus, who is the bread of life, and we are bound together as one. We are bound together in Christ as his body. We find our belonging in Jesus’ Body. We find our peace in Jesus’ body. We find the blessings for which we are longing, the purpose God has given us, the acceptance and love we need. As members of Jesus’ body, bound together as one, we find our release from fear and anxiety, we find the fulfilment we need. As members of Jesus’ body, bound together as one, we find that we are fed by the Body of Christ, the bread of life. 

“These Are the Pale Deaths Which Men Miscall Their Lives”

The Rev. Brad Sullivan

Emmanuel Episcopal Church

August 8, 2021

Proper 14, B

Ephesians 4:25 - 5:2

John 6:35, 41-51

“These Are the Pale Deaths Which Men Miscall Their Lives”

We aren’t wretched, you know? Paul writes in Ephesians about ways which we want to give up: lying, anger, bitterness, wrath, slander, evil talk, malice, stealing, all of these and more. These ways of being live inside of us. They are a part of us, or maybe they have become a part of us. Perhaps they weren’t there initially and only came to dwell within us as we were hurt and broken throughout our lives. In any case, we have lying, anger, bitterness, wrath, and all of these ways dwelling inside of us.

We are, however, not wretched and terrible. Our truest selves, are kind, tenderhearted, forgiving, loving. We are made in God’s image, and so the beauty of love, forgiveness, tenderheartedness, and kindness is intrinsic to who we are. Those ways of life are our truest selves. We are not wretched. We are beautiful.

Now again, the other ways, bitterness, anger, all of those, are part of us. We may call them our inner demons, and we’ll likely never be rid of them. As much as we may strive for love, forgiveness, and beauty, these darker parts will always come back, rearing their heads. We can fight them, but that’s like fighting fire with fire. We can pretend they aren’t there, but they’ll just gradually take over. Rather than fighting them or denying them, I suggest (as a friend of mine suggested) that we dance with them. Maybe have them over for a meal. Offer them some coffee or tea. Just don’t feed off of them, for they are the things that bring death.

One of my favorite bands, Metallica, has a song called, To Live Is to Die. The short and poignant lyric of this song is, “When a man lies, he murders some part of the world. These are the pale deaths which men miscall their lives. All this I cannot bear to witness any longer. Cannot the kingdom of salvation take me home?” I’m fairly certain I’ve used that quote before in a sermon, though what I didn’t know previously is that the first part of that quote comes from 17th century German, Lutheran theologian and minister Paul Gerhardt. The second half of the lyric comes from Metallica’s former bassist, Cliff Burton. 

That is a beautiful blending of sacred and secular by my favorite heavy metal band, and it shows this need that we all have for healing and salvation, from all the pale deaths that we miscall our lives. 

Taking these quotes from a Lutheran theologian and a heavy metal bassist, we can apply this lyric to Paul’s writing from Ephesians that we heard today. “When a man [is bitter, angry, wrathful, and all of those other ways of death] he murders some part of the world. These are the pale deaths which men miscall their lives. All this I cannot bear to witness any longer. Cannot the kingdom of salvation take me home?” 

These ways Paul writes about truly are the ways of death, and when we feed off of them, we are feeding off the bread of the pale deaths which we miscall our lives. When we live these ways, we murder parts of the world.

Paul writes in Romans 6:23, “the wages of sin is death…” What was the first sin that we hear of in scripture? Garden of Eden, eating the fruit of the tree which God said not to eat. So what was that first sin? Disobedience? Mistrust? Desire for power rather than a good relationship? Bitterness at being told “no”? Stealing what wasn’t theirs to take? Believing and living the serpents’ lie? Which of those was the first sin? Id’ just say “yes,” all of them.

Adam and Eve wanted something good, maybe greater power, maybe to sate their curiosity, maybe just a tasty piece of fruit. In any case, God had said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.” Well, they didn’t exactly die, at least not physically. Their relationship with God, however, took a drastic cardiac arrest kind of turn. Their relationship with each other was deeply harmed. When they ate of the bread of bitterness, mistrust, desire of power over relationship, living a lie, they fed off of the pales deaths which we miscall our lives, and they murdered some part of the world.

“The wages of sin is death,” Paul writes. Now remember, sin does not mean we’re wretched and terrible. Sin is missing the mark: seeking something good, but missing the good we seek and hitting something less good or something harmful instead. 

These harmful things end up hurting us and others - our relationships are broken. We find these things to bring pale deaths rather than life. 

Now again, these harmful ways are a part of us, but they aren’t parts that we need to hate. When these parts of ourselves start speaking up, we dance with them, or have some tea with them. They may have something important to say about ourselves or about the world. When I’m angry about something in the world, there may be something I could do to help make it better. When I’m bitter towards someone, there may be something going on in me that I need to address, or maybe a broken relationship that I need to tend to and work to heal. So we can listen to our anger, and bitterness, etc., over a cup of tea, and we learn what they can teach us about ourselves and the world, but we don’ feed off of them.

Jesus teaches us not to feed off of these pale deaths. Rather, Jesus teaches to eat the bread of life. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” Jesus says. “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever…”

“I am,” Jesus says. “I am.” “God is.” Remember that “I am” is the unspeakable name of God. “I am the bread of life.” God is the bread of life. God dwells within all of us, and we are made in God’s image. The bread of life is within us all. Kindness, tenderheartedness, forgiveness, love: these are all aspects of God, aspects of Jesus, the bread of life which dwells within us all. 

To eat the bread of life is to feed off our truest selves. When Jesus gave his life, his body, his flesh as the bread of life, we recognize Jesus as someone other than us, a human who lived a couple thousand years ago, a human who is also God. Jesus is that particular God-incarnate man, and he is the particular bread of life. Jesus is also something, someone who is not external to us, not other than us. Jesus is that particular God incarnate man, and Jesus is also our truest selves. We are all one with God, made in God’s image, and Jesus lives within us all, not as something external, but as who we are. 

The bread of life is shared and eaten as we reach out to Jesus who is wholly other than us, and the bread is shared and eaten when we feed off of the kindness, tenderheartedness, forgiveness, and love which is our truest selves. The bread of life is part of us. The bread of life dwells within us, and the bread of life dwells among us, in community, in the communion we share. 

Rather than feed off the pale deaths which we miscall our lives: bitterness, wrath, anger, lies, murdering some part of the world, and rather than fighting against those things, we dance with them, we invite them for tea. We learn what we can, and we let them go.  We aren’t wretched. We aren’t terrible. We are kind. We are tenderhearted. We are forgiving. We are loving. Those are our truest selves, beautiful and wonderful. When we live those truest parts of ourselves, when we feed off of that bread, we’re feeding off the bread of life which is Jesus, and when we feed off that bread, we bring life to the world.